Greensmowers are well known in the turf care industry for cutting grass at the extremely low heights of cut required on golf greens. They come in different varieties, including a walk behind type that has just one cutting unit and a riding type that mounts multiple cutting units. The Greensmaster 3000 is a riding type greensmower that has three identical cutting units and is manufactured by The Toro Company, the assignee of this invention.
The cutting units on most greensmowers are generally the same and are known generically as reel mowers. Each cutting unit has a frame that mounts a rotatable cutting reel which sweeps the grass against a bedknife adjacent the reel to cut the grass. Front and rear rollers carried on the frame allow the cutting unit to roll over the ground. The cutting unit is propelled by the motion of the greensmover itself.
In recent years, turf grooming reels have appeared as accessories for the cutting units used on greensmowers. The grooming reels are placed on the cutting unit between the front roller and the cutting reel. They include a series of spaced, annular knife blades which normally are very close to the ground or even in slight engagement with the ground. The grooming reels are driven off the cutting reel to rotate the knife blades which then cut grass runners and remove thatch, thereby promoting better turf conditions on the golf green. U.S. Pat. No. 4,494,365 to Lloyd discloses a grooming reel of this type mounted on a typical greensmower cutting unit.
The front and rear rollers on the cutting units of most greensmower are vertically adjustable on the frame to raise or lower the height of cut. Threaded adjusting rods operated by rotatable knobs are often used to adjust the rollers. The device disclosed in the Lloyd patent uses threaded adjusting rods of this type to also raise or lower the grooming reel. This adjustment is needed to control how far the knife blades are spaced above or penetrate into the turf to suit the operator's preferences.
The grooming reel of Lloyd cannot be quickly or easily raised from its normal operating position adjacent the ground. It can, of course, be raised or lowered by rotating the threaded adjusting rods, but this is both tiring and time consuming if one wishes to raise it vey far or very frequently. In addition, once the grooming reel has been raised up out of the way, the desired operating position of the grooming reel relative to the ground has been lost. The only way to reestablish this setting is by trial and error readjustment of the threaded rods, which takes time and effort.
Several disadvantages arise because the Lloyd grooming reel cannot be raised or lowered without affecting the adjustment provided by the threaded rods. For example, the grooming reel is often not reset to a consistent operating position making the results of the grooming process unpredictable, i.e. too much thatch removed one time and not enough the next. In addition, Applicants have discovered that some operators pick an operating position for the grooming reel which is raised slightly above the ground and then leave the grooming reel in that position permanently, whether they want to groom the green or not. Even though the grooming reel can be shut off to not rotate, the tips of the knife blades are too close to the ground in this "permanent" position and on occasion can tear up or otherwise damage the green.